In this tutorial you will learn how to use several different blending options and techniques to create an awesome looking futuristic town. The final image would be great to use as a desktop background, webpage background, or even snipped into a signature banner. Hopefully after following this tutorial you will have a good understanding of the blending options, and how to apply them for different effects.

Notice: I would like to point out that the concept of this tutorial is based off of a work by the talented deviantart artist Bioshadow. If you liked this piece, please visit be sure to visit the BioShadow gallery to view some of great digital artwork!
Lets get started.

Step 3.)
Next create a new layer, and name it "Moon".
Get out the Elliptical marquee tool, hold down the SHIFT key on your keyboard, and draw a perfect circle somewhere in the upper portion of the screen. I placed mine in the top left corner of the canvas.Fill the circle with the color #FEFEFE (which is an off white) as pictured bellow:

Step 4.)
With the selection still active, get out the elliptical marquee tool again; this time hold down the ALT key on your keyboard, and deselect a portion of the circle as pictured here:

Go to Select->Modify->Contract with a setting of 1 or 2 pixels:
Fill this selection with the color: #DFDFDF this is be a slight "shadow" to our moon.

Step 5.)
Now double click the "moon" layer, and apply the following blending options: Outer Glow:

Result:

Step 6.)
Now create a new layer, and name it "stars". We're going to make some stars for our picture now.
Set your foreground color to: #FEFEFE (off white)
Get out the brush tool, and set it up like this:

Now we're just going to dot some stars into the background. Now bear in mind that its very easy to go "overboard" with the stars, just keep in mind that you only need about 22 of them. Here's how mine looks after l dotted it with some stars:

Now double click the layer, and apply the following blending options: Outer Glow:

Here's what you'll get:

Step 7.)
Create a new layer, and name it "clouds".
Now using the Elliptical marquee tool again, make a oval selection like so about mid way down the canvas:

While holding SHIFT on your keyboard, make another selection like so:

And do this a few more times, the idea is to create a 'cartoonie' looking cloud shape:

8.) Fill the selection with: #586F7B

Double click the layer, and apply the following blending options:Inner Shadow:

Result:

Step 8.)
Use the same technique as in step 7 to create 2 more clouds on the canvas, so that you have a total of three clouds. If you're feeling lazy you can duplicate your first cloud layer, and just flip it horizontally Edit->Transform->Flip Horizontal. Here's what l have after adding 2 additional clouds to my scene:

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